Although burners for controlling gas flow and flame generation in a cooking appliance have been known, a recent development that improves a flame spreading features within a controlled area so that the burner does not create a limited set of rings of heat application to a cooking utensil. For example, U.S. application Ser. No. 08/955,002, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,299,436, discloses a multiple fingered burner that expands the heating zone without exposing the peripheral ports in the fingers to exposure from spills occurring above the cooking top. Nevertheless, while such an arrangement improves distribution of the flames within a cooking top area, such irregularly shaped burners often have difficulty, particularly when sealed to the cooking top and subjected to various flow rates of primary air, in maintaining appropriately sized flame kernels throughout the irregular pattern of kernels throughout the cooking top area.
Moreover, while the known multiple fingered burner for cooking tops includes a burner body made of multiple pieces, proper operation and fit between the pieces was made a function of the shaping of the pieces with interfitting portions aligned along predetermined matching points of the shape. As a result, unless the interfitting portions of the shapes were accurately aligned by a user attempting to assemble a disassembled burner, for example, after cleaning the burner pieces, the user would have to use care in manipulating the pieces to physically align and fit the adjacent burner parts together, match the parts and properly connect the gas control paths. Slight misalignments may not be readily visible when parts have been prevented by some obstruction from nesting in a position that properly shapes the gas flow channels. Such misalignments could adversely affect proper operation of the burner and interfere with generation and distribution of flame kernels, the formation of the kernels and the control of ignition of the proper flame.